2012 President

The Tar Heel State has grown steadily over the past decade. After being  the “last in” in 2000 — North Carolina was awarded the final House seat in reapportionment, bringing its tally to 13 — it was the “first out” in 2010 — falling just short of the population needed for a 14th seat. Statewide, population grew by 18.5% over those 10 years. The state’s growth has centered in urban areas, changing North Carolina’s political and cultural disposition. Raleigh and Charlotte, the state’s two largest cities, each saw population growth of over 30% between 2000 and 2010, while most rural counties grew at less than half that rate. As the chart below shows, the political power in North Carolina now lies in a trio of urban centers: Charlotte, the Triangle (anchored around Raleigh, the state’s capital and fastest-growing city), and the Triad (comprised primarily of Winston-Salem, Greensboro and High Point). Those three regions now contain nearly two-thirds of the state’s population, wielding outsized political influence in a state where political power has historically been diffuse. Chart 1: Regional two-party vote, 2008 Election Democrats are excited about their chances with growing urban concentrations of voters with advanced degrees — historically a

The Supreme Court’s narrow decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act means that the country’s partisan battle over health care essentially remains unchanged. Conservatives hoped that the Supreme Court would throw them a lifeline by invalidating the law, which would have allowed the right to celebrate the end of Obamacare without having to take control of the government. The court kicked the issue back to the political arena, though, and part of the 2012 election will involve the American people giving a referendum on the law, whether they realize it or not. President Obama and the Democrats will continue to defend the law, particularly its popular provisions, and Mitt Romney and the Republicans will continue to promise to throw it out if given control of the government. They will emphasize the individual mandate in their critiques, the least popular aspect of the law, just as they have been doing since the law’s passage in 2010. With all that said, this decision likely will not have much effect on the presidential election, because by not overturning the law, the court — though narrowly — simply affirmed the country’s political reality. Barring some international crisis or other unexpected event, this election was

In Mitt Romney’s vice presidential search, flashy is out, and boring is in. Now that it appears that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has a fair chance to defeat President Barack Obama — a development that seems to have genuinely surprised many Republicans, perhaps including some of those big names who declined to run themselves — Romney does not need a big-name, attention-grabbing running mate to help him win this race. He just needs someone who won’t cause him headaches. That’s why the 2012 GOP presidential ticket could be a double-dip cone of vanilla. Not French vanilla, just plain vanilla. Hence, we’re holding steady with the top name on our vice presidential watch list, Rob Portman. The Ohio senator and former Bush administration official has a sterling resume that would reassure voters he could take over in the event a President Romney was unable to serve at some point during his term, and his main downside — his Bush connections — are already known and can be handled by Romney’s press team. While any nominee might have skeletons in his or her closet, Portman appears pretty well-vetted at this point. So is the new second name on our list of

It is arguable that a whole new era in American politics was spawned by 9/11. Since then, compromise has become a dirty word to many and “compassionate conservatism” has gone the way of the Edsel. The two major parties are offering two competing, and vastly different, visions of America in a world that is both physically dangerous and economically unstable. This new era is characterized by stubborn partisanship and ongoing polarization that has drawn constant criticism from voters and pundits alike. Yet thus far there has been one positive outgrowth of this visceral political environment in the form of vastly increased turnouts, particularly in presidential elections The last two presidential contests have offered choices, not echoes, and voters have responded by flocking to the polls. In 2004, fully 60% of the citizen-eligible population cast ballots for the first time since 1968 (the last presidential election before the voting age was lowered to 18 years old). In 2008, the turnout rate grew again to nearly 62%. But evidence is building that voter participation this year may fall well below that mark. The 2012 presidential contest so far has failed to excite voters, unlike the campaigns of both 2004 and 2008. The

Joel K. Goldstein has forgotten more about the vice presidency than the rest of us ever knew, and this week he examines and challenges many of the myths you’ll hear as Mitt Romney prepares to choose a running mate. Goldstein, the Vincent C. Immel Professor of Law at Saint Louis University School of Law, is the author of The Modern American Vice Presidency: The Transformation of a Political Institution (Princeton University Press, 1982) and numerous other works on the vice presidency, presidency and constitutional law. — The Editors It used to be said that no one runs for vice president. Gerald Pomper exposed the fallacy of that old dictum in his 1966 article, The Nomination of Hubert Humphrey for Vice-President, which recounted the steps Humphrey took to position himself to be selected for the second spot on Lyndon B. Johnson’s ticket in 1964. Most vice presidential campaigns remained relatively short and obscure in those days because, absent a situation like 1964 where a known presidential nominee had a vice presidential opening, no one really focused on the second spot until after the presidential nomination was decided at the convention. That pattern remained for another cycle or two after 1964 until

Note: This article originally appeared on Rhodes Cook’s political blog. About half of the presidential elections over the last half century have been impacted by a significant third party or independent candidate. This election is unlikely to be one of them. With last month’s closure of the ambitious Americans Elect effort to find a credible centrist candidate, the likelihood of a third option on the 2012 presidential ballot that could muster 5%, 10%, even 15% of the popular vote has evaporated. Instead, the lone alternatives to Barack Obama and Mitt Romney this fall will be from the usual array of third parties — the Libertarian, Green and Constitution parties — that in recent years have together mustered about 1% to 2% of the nationwide popular vote. Often they nominate largely unknown party loyalists to represent them. This year, these third parties are trying to make more of a splash. The Libertarians have chosen former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, who switched his allegiance after his long-shot bid for the Republican presidential nomination failed to gain traction. The Constitution Party has selected former Rep. Virgil Goode of Virginia as its presidential nominee. Goode served six terms in Congress as a Democrat,

Last week, Twitter user @chrishale7 asked NBC News political director Chuck Todd about making an electoral map showing the states by their population size, rather than just a straight geographic map, in order to better show the importance of the states in the Electoral College. Todd (@chucktodd) replied by suggesting that this was something we might like to take on. Sure enough, we do love what we call the “political map of the United States.” The University of Virginia Center for Politics (back then, it was the Center for Governmental Studies) released a political map of the United States after the 2000 election, which was created by former center staffer Josh Scott. We updated the map in 2004, and now we’ve tweaked it to reflect the 2010 census. The states are sized based on their populations. The political map goes to show how divided the nation really is. Aliens from another planet might look at, say, the 2000 electoral map, in which George W. Bush won 30 states, and say that he romped in the election. But, of course, Al Gore’s 20 states — and edge in the popular vote — meant that the Electoral College map didn’t tell the

With five months to go until Election Day 2012, all indications are that the presidential race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney is going to go down to the wire and that the outcome will ultimately be decided by voters in 10-15 battleground states in which neither candidate has a decisive advantage. These findings raise an important question for the Obama and Romney campaigns. In deciding how to allocate money and other resources, how much emphasis should they give to mobilizing potential supporters versus persuading undecided voters? The answer to this question depends on the characteristics and political attitudes of two key groups of voters in the battleground states: unregistered supporters and undecided registered voters. In order to compare the potential payoffs of a strategy emphasizing mobilization compared with a strategy emphasizing persuasion, I analyzed data from a March 20-26 Gallup Poll in 12 key battleground states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. This was the most recent battleground state polling data available for analysis. A total of 1,046 adults were interviewed on landline and cellular telephones, including 871 registered voters. Swing voters: Unhappy with Obama but unenthusiastic about voting

“I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.” — Socrates With all of the polls, models and history at their disposal, political analysts should be able to figure out who is going to win a November presidential election by June, right? Well, not quite. While we would modestly suggest to Socrates and our readers that we know more than nothing about the election, declaring the winner with certainty at this point is a fool’s errand, particularly when the current data argue only that the contest will be a close one. In the RealClearPolitics average of national horse race polls as of Wednesday, President Obama was narrowly ahead of Mitt Romney by 2.0 percentage points. Meanwhile, in last week’s Crystal Ball, Alan Abramowitz showed how his respected presidential election model forecasts a very tight race at this point, with Obama as a slight favorite. But surely, this year is an outlier, many would assert. Because of the unique circumstances surrounding this election, including the great economic dislocation caused by the 2008 crash and the restless mood of Americans even after three straight wave elections, it’s understandable that this contest would remain hazy late into the spring. That’s true. But uncertainty

It looks like it’s going to be another tough season for long-suffering fans of the Chicago Cubs. Two months into the 2012 baseball season, the Cubs are mired in last place in the National League’s Central Division with one of the worst records in Major League Baseball. But the patriarch of the family that owns the Cubs, billionaire investor Joe Ricketts, has had more on his mind lately than the Cubs’ problems. It seems that he’s been busy with another major project — stopping Barack Obama from winning a second term in the White House. A few weeks ago it was revealed that Ricketts, who made a fortune as the founder of the online brokerage firm TD Ameritrade, was preparing to spend $10 million on an advertising campaign reminding voters in battleground states about Obama’s relationship with fiery Chicago pastor Jeremiah Wright. After stories about the proposed ad campaign appeared in the media, it was almost universally panned by political commentators on the right as well as the left, and Ricketts announced that he would not be funding it. But that didn’t mean that he was giving up on his goal of defeating President Obama. It turns out that Ricketts

According to a Gallup Poll analysis of recent polling data on the mood of the American public, President Obama appears to face a difficult road to winning a second term in November. The specific indicators of the national mood included in Gallup’s analysis were economic confidence, the percentage of Americans citing the economy as the country’s most important problem, satisfaction with the state of the nation and approval of the president’s job performance. While all of these indicators have shown some improvement in the past year, according to Gallup they all remain at levels that suggest trouble for the incumbent. For example, only 24% of Americans said that they were satisfied with the direction of the country and 66% cited the economy as the most important problem facing the nation. There is little evidence about how indicators like satisfaction with the direction of the country or perceptions of the most important problem facing the nation affect the outcomes of presidential elections. However, there is strong evidence that an incumbent president’s approval rating, even several months before Election Day, has a strong relationship to the eventual outcome of the election. After examining the approval ratings in May of the election year

Although his vice presidential selection is likely months away, we suspect that even now, Mitt Romney and his team are beginning to narrow down their list of possibilities. Joel K. Goldstein, the nation’s foremost authority on both the selection and service of modern vice presidents, explains how outside factors influenced previous candidates’ choices, and what Romney’s selection may tell us about him and his decision-making style. Goldstein, the Vincent C. Immel Professor of Law at Saint Louis University School of Law, is the author of The Modern American Vice Presidency: The Transformation of a Political Institution (Princeton University Press, 1982) and numerous other works on the vice presidency, presidency and constitutional law. — The Editors Mitt Romney faces a complicated vice presidential choice, and his predicament traces to two factors: His campaign has multiple needs and the pool of potential candidates offers imperfect options. Romney’s situation is not, however, novel. If history is a guide, his options will sort out over time and, like his predecessors, he will ultimately choose from imperfect alternatives. Vice presidential selection is inherently contextual and relational. It is contextual because the choice invariably depends upon a range of factors over which the candidate has relatively

At the end of January, the Crystal Ball examined the latest state-by-state unemployment numbers and what they could mean for the presidential election. The fact that the nation’s economic difficulties have hit certain places harder than others could have a real impact on what we anticipate will be a close election in November. Our analysis suggested that the Obama campaign could tailor its economic message to each state based on the specific jobless conditions there. While critics of the president would surely prefer to point to statistics like labor-force participation, the unemployment figures presented below, while mixed, could be packaged to tell a positive story for the incumbent in some swing states. Chart 1: State-by-state unemployment rates, April 2012 Notes: P – preliminary figure; R – revised figure based on populations, model reestimation and new seasonal adjustment. Source: National Bureau of Labor Statistics Obviously, the safe Blue and Red states on the chart are going to stick with their preferred party, even if their unemployment is high, as in the case of Democratic states (like California), or low, as in the case of Republican states (like the Dakotas). At the same time, the president would have trouble making a compelling

In the beginning, there was the Etch A Sketch. After the Illinois primary on March 20, which signaled the beginning of the end of the Republican presidential nominating process, Mitt Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom discussed how his candidate would pivot toward the general election: “It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.” Several days later, there was President Obama, who told Russian President Dmitri Medvedev that he would have “flexibility” to negotiate on missile defense after the election. Then there were the comments from Hilary Rosen, a Democratic strategist, who said that Ann Romney (wife of Mitt) “never worked a day in her life.” And last week, after his vice president pushed him into a corner, Obama surprised no one by endorsing gay marriage, a Darwinian evolution from his earlier position of supporting just civil unions. The very next day — in a bit of timing we’ll simply call curiously coincidental — the Washington Post reported that Mitt Romney, as a prep school boy, cut the hair of a purportedly gay classmate in an act of bullying at his elite boarding school. What do all of these things have